Asprox botnet, a long-running nuisance, disappears

The Asprox botnet, whose malware-spamming activities have been followed for years by security researchers, appears to be gone.

Since 2007, the botnet was used for effective spam campaigns that sought to trick people into downloading malware attachments in emails that purported to be court notices or notifications from services including FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service and American Airlines.

But by January, the botnet seemed to be shut down, wrote Ryan Olson, intelligence director for Palo Alto Networks, in a blog post. Throughout 2014, the security company noticed the botnet was distributing Kuluoz, a malware program linked to Asprox.